The Ghost Within
by Ikonopeiston
Summary: AU and non-canonical. Baralai and Nooj meet and discuss a matter of mutual interest


The characters and the place names are the sole property of Square-Enix.

A/N - This is a variation on the theme Heavenmonument suggested to me. It is in no way connected to the earlier piece save in also being AU.

**THE GHOST WITHIN**

**TRANSITIONS - 7**

It had begun to rain hard when Baralai emerged from the meeting he had just held in the giant office building in the center of Luca. He pulled up his hood and bent over to protect his face from the cold stinging drops mixed with the occasional flurry of sleet and as a consequence blundered squarely into the midsection of the tall man making his painful way up the steps to the wide doors. With more of a crashing clang than might have been expected, both men fell in a heap into an inconveniently placed puddle.

"You clumsy cretin, why don't you look where you're going?" The deep voice of his victim was immediately familiar to the Praetor, bringing back memories of other scoldings in another time a world away.

"Oh, my god, Nooj! Is it you? I'm... I'm sorry. I didn't see you and ..."

"Baralai! What in the name of Ixion are you doing here in Luca? I thought you were safely stowed away in Bevelle. Here, give me a hand up. I'm getting soaked sitting in this pool of rain."

Baralai scrambled to his feet and, bracing his feet, hauled his crippled former Captain into an upright position. "Did I dent anything?" he asked, only half joking.

"No. My metal parts are considerably more sturdy than my flesh ones. My leg is intact but my mid-section probably has a bruise the exact size and shape of your head." Nooj straightened his clothing with the cat-like fastidiousness which his friend remembered so well.

Baralai pulled his own cloak more closely around him. "Well, let's get out of this weather and go somewhere warm so we can do some catching up."

-X-

Later when they were ensconced in a cozy bar with glasses of brandy in their hands and their garments giving off clouds of steam as they dried, they inspected one another warily in the warm ambience of soft lights and murmured conversations.

"So, how have you been and what brings you out of your priestly nest?" Nooj had never quite stopped teasing the younger man about his early calling.

Baralai took a tentative sip. "This is good brandy. Leave it to you to know where to find the best. OK, I'm here signing a deal with some contractors to get started on the restoration of the big temple. Since the world has changed we in Bevelle can't make our livings on charity anymore. You know our economy used to be based on the offerings from the pilgrims and those who wanted blessings and so forth. Now that's all over and we have to find another way to earn our keep."

"What are you planning?"

"Don't laugh. I thought we might try for the tourist cash by turning the temple into a sort of amusement park - you know, the sort of destination families with their children might visit. I've talked to the contractors about rebuilding the area under the temple where Vegnagun used to be. They will construct a replica of the weapon and use lights and sound to recreate the ... You're laughing." He stared resentfully at the man across the table.

"No, I'm not. I'm smiling grimly at the thought of the people who didn't have the courage to fight for their own lives or freedom coming to a place where their worst enemy lurked to get some cheap thrills and brag to their children."

"It's human nature, Nooj. We can't change it.'

"No, we can't. Go on, Baralai. I can see that you're doing the best you can for your people. Ixion knows you've always been the compassionate one, the one who tried to make things better. I hope this idea works out for you and the citizens of your city."

Baralai looked down at his hands and blushed slightly. He was unaccustomed to praise especially from the lips of his unsentimental companion. "And you? What are you doing here? Don't tell me you've left your precious solitude and moved in the middle of all these mobs?"

Nooj smiled his rare genuine smile. "Never! I'm here on one of my regular visits to the library. They've turned the basement of that office building you came out of into a storage area for historical spheres. I like to check in and see if they have any new ones for me to study. I've picked up work on my history of Spira again. You know I put it on hold while we saved the world." He was mocking himself this time.

There was a period of silence as both men seemed to be lost in their memories of those days when they had been involved in their differing ways in the struggle for the continued existence of Spira. The warmth of the room and the strength of the brandy combined to make the Praetor and the Meyvn less cautious with their words than was their norm.

"Nooj. How did you feel when Shuyin first took you over?" Baralai blurted out the question with no proper lead-in.

"Why ask? You ought to know what it's like." Nooj almost seemed to be expecting it.

"I wanted to know if we felt the same thing. You were the first so I thought..."

"You thought I might excuse your actions with my own? All right, I'll tell you as much as I can remember." He paused as if to collect the remnants of that broken time. "I recall stumbling over the bodies in the inner passage, seeing them fallen and empty, slumped against walls and one another..." He paused and covered his eyes with his good hand. Baralai could see the tremor in his shoulders and reached out a tentative hand.

Nooj shook his head. "I'm all right. The next thing was flickering lights, filling my vision. At first I didn't recognize them for what they were and then it was too late."

"I don't think any of us knew that pyre-flies were dangerous. We're used to seeing them when a soul is sent or when they gather at the MoonFlow. None of us would have tried to avoid them." The Praetor was reassuring himself as much as Nooj.

"No. We had no idea of the danger. You're right. Anyway, they landed on my body and I could feel them scratching at my skin and hear them clicking on my left side. Are they really heavy, Baralai, or is it just the presence of Shuyin which made them feel that way?"

"I don't know. I felt it too. Like little weights adding up to a pressure inside and out. I had hoped you would have an answer." 

"I don't. They seemed to penetrate me in every orifice and then they were gone and I felt cold and shaken. It was as if I had been very ill and the fever had broken leaving me weak and exhausted. Did you feel that?"

"No. When they left you and entered me, I felt strong like I had become bigger and more important; I was bursting with power. The weight felt like a weapon in my hand."

Nooj thought for a moment. "That's odd. I would have imagined we would have had similar experiences. I wonder ... wait! Shuyin took me in a period of despair and depression. You were angry when he possessed you. That might account for it. He augmented what emotions he found at the time of his invasion. Did you stay that way during the whole time? Angry, I mean?"

"More or less. I think you're on to something. Remember, I was under his control for a much shorter time than you were. He didn't have the opportunity to fine tune me so much."

"True." Nooj looked into the depths of his brandy and beckoned the bar-maid for a refill, his third. Baralai placed his palm over his barely tasted glass and shook his head at the inquiring look from the woman.

The older man took a hefty swallow and continued. "He made me shoot the three of you. He didn't force you into any crime like that."

"No, he didn't," the white-haired Praetor answered with sarcasm threading his voice. "He just persuaded me to get him ready to destroy the world. That's a lot better than wounding three people."

Nooj tilted back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. "It's not a subject to be disputed. He used us both, in different ways, to get what he wanted. And what he wanted was horribly close to what I wanted and still want." The last three words were faintly breathed into the air. He paused again and closed his eyes briefly. "When did you know it was more than just pyre-flies? When did Shuyin make himself known?" Nooj leaned both elbows on the table and bent his intent gaze on the other. Baralai felt as though his very soul was being probed by those dark eyes.

"I... I'm not totally sure. When I left the crypt under Bevelle, I don't know what happened next. It's all confused. I wanted to kill you for what you did at the Travel Agency and I saw the lights swarming around you, dazzling my eyes so I couldn't aim properly, then I ... I just walked away, I think. I'm not sure of anything until the part at the last when I saw Yuna's face and ...it was over." He buried his face in his hands and shuddered. "He must have been riding me from the very beginning. I can't remember much of anything until it was over, just flashes that don't make a connected picture."

Nooj was silent for a protracted length of time. When he finally spoke, he seemed puzzled and hesitant. "We were both taken by the same entity using the identical method and yet our accounts are completely different. Our invader was a clever one, using our weaknesses against us and the world he blamed. Shuyin stayed hidden in me for what seems to have been a long time. Looking back, I can now see he was moving levers and learning how to make me do what he wanted."

"Why did he want you to kill us?"

"I gave that months of thought after I was myself again. It's hard even now to separate what I figured out and what Shuyin said aloud or inside my head. He was me for a long time, at least I felt he was. The best answer I could come up with is that he needed to isolate me in order to use me most effectively. If the three of you, particularly Paine, had stayed with me, you might have figured out there was something wrong and warned me in time to frustrate his plans. So, he took the most direct route to make me an outcast. It worked too."

"But why switch to me if things were going so well with you?"

"I can only guess that he thought he might act more smoothly with a whole body at his disposal. And don't forget, he took me in the Cave because my spirit was filled with darkness and that gave him an opening. I was less tormented under Bevelle and you were consumed with rage which was even better for his purposes. Did he tell us that? It all comes back to what I said earlier. He saw his chances and he took them, gambling as to which would be his most effective move." Nooj raised an eyebrow in an unspoken question.

"I think that makes a sick sort of sense." Baralai nodded. "It's the way that bastard would think. In a real way, I'm sorry he's at peace now. I'd rather think of him suffering the way he made all of us suffer."

The Meyvn laughed softly. "Is that any way for a priest to talk?"

"I'm not a priest." 

"You're as much a priest as we have around here these days. Don't dwell on Shuyin; he's gone and so is Lenne. We don't have any empirical evidence of whether they are happy in their ultimate home or whether they are simply dissolved into the Nothingness I expect to find."

"But the FarPlane! We've been there and seen it." 

"How many Sent souls did we see there? I've always thought the FarPlane was an elaborate construct designed to lure the mass of people into belief. We don't need it anymore and I suspect it will gradually fade like the fantasy it is."

Baralai sighed. "You could never be converted, could you? Always hard-headed and set on your own path."

"Can you say I'm wrong?" Nooj drained his glass and motioned for a refill.

"No. But I can't say you're right either. Well, it was good meeting you again. We've needed to talk about the Shuyin thing for a long time so we can put it behind us. Are you planning to come to the festival when they re-open the Macalania Temple?"

"I hadn't heard anything about it. I thought it was under the waters."

"It is, but they've built a replica as the center of an amusement park."

"So that's where you got the idea for Bevelle?"

The younger man grinned. "Never let a good idea go unstolen. I learned that from Gippal." He stood, dropped some coins on the table and strode off, his white hair glowing like phosphorus in the dimness of the tavern.

Nooj picked up his fresh glass of brandy and, warming the volatile liquid with his right hand, inhaled the fumes thus released. He looked into the depths of the glass and seemed to see there an alien face. A man, young with pale hair. He wondered, not for the first time, if Shuyin was really gone. There were times when he was not so sure as he had sounded to Baralai. Suddenly, he was grimly aware of the painful drag of the machina limbs. Maybe it was the weather but he thought it more likely to be the remembering. He drank deeply of the potent brew and willed the memories to fade. Again.

Monday, May 26, 2008

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